Platinum Arts Sandbox is a game design tool that allows users to quickly and easily create their own worlds, even cooperatively. It is free, open source, and easy to use. In addition it has even been used, and very well received, at Mildred Elley College during the summer Kids Camp in a course on how to create modifications.

Microsoft Corp. may be trying to make it easier for delinquent corporate customers to "true up" their volume license contracts. But CIOs who have tangled with Microsoft on licensing issues said this latest program does little to tackle the real issue: the difficulty, short of buying Microsoft's most expensive class of license, of staying compliant.

"The GNU project and the GCC developers are pleased to announce the release of GCC 4.2.2"

With English as the dominant language used by Linux developers in much of the world, Japanese and Chinese software and hardware developers have a huge hurdle to overcome. Having enthusiastic attendees at Linux symposiums staged in Japan does help, but culture and language differences still get in the way.

Ever since Dell announced that they would be selling computers with Ubuntu pre-installed, I have wanted to buy one. This is not because I was unable to install Ubuntu myself, but because I wanted to reward Dell for choosing Ubuntu. I also wanted to make a statement that there was consumer demand for Linux to be pre-installed on computers.

The glamorous new kids in the Linux security parade are SELinux, AppArmor, and all manner of virtualization technologies. (Though it is being discovered that virtual machines, just like chroot jails, aren't all that difficult to break out of, so don't count on them for strong security.) But don't overlook the reliable, helpful old-timer Bastille Linux.

"...RMS will be in Bogoto, Columbia on 10 October, speaking about the goals and philosophy of the Free Software movement. On the 12th and 13th of October, he'll be San Jose, Costa Rica talking about software patents and how they obstruct software development (at the first talk) and about the history and status of the GNU Operating System (at the second talk).